| Index | Close | Chg | %Chg | Note | | S&P 500 | 7,489.72 | +52.09 | +0.70% | Range 7,399.83–7,512.04; +1.05% on the week; 1.72% below the 7,620.90 52-wk closing high | | Nasdaq Composite | 25,373.85 | +251.67 | +1.00% | Range 25,004.33–25,460.86; +1.59% on the week; second straight advance | | Nasdaq 100 | 28,274.20 | +167.85 | +0.60% | Range 27,954.24–28,606.78 — closed 1.18% off the high; −6.95% in July, worst month since March 2025 (CNBC); 8.09% below the 30,762.20 record | | Dow Jones Industrials | 52,485.03 | +276.97 | +0.53% | Investing.com board 52,485.74 (+277.68); range 51,996.32–52,623.14; +0.7% in July — a fourth straight winning month | | Russell 2000 | 2,931.67 | −14.43 | −0.49% | The only major U.S. index that closed red — small caps did not participate at all | | VIX | 15.99 | −1.10 | −6.44% | Range 15.82–18.70; lowest close of the episode, from 20.66 on Wednesday | | PHLX Semiconductor (SOX) | 11,311.1 | +8.1 | +0.07% | Range 11,231.8–11,885.7 — the index was +5.15% intraday and closed +0.07%. Bloomberg: chipmakers “closed little changed at the end of the worst month since 2008”; SMH −16.9% month-to-date | | UST 10Y (official par) | 4.75% | +7 bp | — | Bloomberg 4 p.m. real-time mark: +3 bp to 4.71%; quote board 4.73 — reconciled in §6 | | UST 2Y (official par) | 4.28% | +5 bp | — | The front end sold off through an in-line ECI | | UST 30Y (official par) | 5.27% | +6 bp | — | A fresh 19-year closing high, taking out Thursday’s 5.21%; the 20Y at 5.28% | | WTI front month | $84.31 | +0.86% | — | Rigzone live board; Bloomberg 4 p.m.: +1.1% to $84.55; TradingEconomics board $86.80 withheld — basis conflict resolved in §10 | | Brent front month | $89.56 | +0.60% | — | Rigzone board; oil posted its biggest monthly gain since March (Bloomberg) | | Gold (spot) | $4,046.96 | −1.4% | — | Bloomberg 4 p.m.; TradingEconomics board $4,042.00 (−1.50%) — the two agree within 0.12% | | DXY | 99.781 | −0.08% | — | A second consecutive sub-100 close; the dollar fell more than 1% in July, its worst month since April (Investing.com) |
Sources: CNBC market live blog; Bloomberg Markets Wrap (“Tech Stocks Power Wall Street Gains at End of July”), Bloomberg /markets quote board and Stock Movers panel; WSJ Markets; Investing.com Major Indices, NDX, SOX, Dow-component and trending-stock boards (all stamped 15:59:59 ET); U.S. Treasury Text View; CME FedWatch and Investing.com Fed Rate Monitor; TradingEconomics commodities and currencies boards; Rigzone crude board; Finviz Groups (rendered, 6:11 PM ET); NY Fed August calendar; Earnings Whispers day pages. Full link list in the companion DataNotes file.
| The tape in one paragraph. The index went up and almost nothing else did — this was the narrowest advance of the month, and the bond market charged for it. The S&P 500 rose 0.70% while six of eleven Finviz sector groups fell, the Russell 2000 fell 0.49%, and Technology itself fell 0.49% (§3). The entire index gain is two tickers: Amazon +15.31% to $271.55 on 115.7m shares, which WSJ characterised alongside Apple’s slide as “record market-cap moves for the tech giants,” and Alphabet +6.73% to $356.13, against Apple −7.35% to $308.91 on 127.5m shares, the heaviest volume on the tape. Amazon’s print did what Microsoft’s did: AWS $42.2bn, +37% y/y, the fastest since 2021 against a 31% bar, with Andy Jassy guiding 2026 capex to $220bn; Wedbush called it “the cleanest beat among the hyperscalers within our coverage” and raised its target to $310 from $293, with KeyCorp to $350, JPMorgan to $365 and BofA to $320. Apple was the mirror image and the more important signal: Tim Cook, on his final earnings call as CEO before handing over to John Ternus in September, called the advanced-chip and memory shortages “very significant” and guided September-quarter revenue growth to 9–11% against a ~12% Street bar — a supply warning, not a demand warning, which converts the AI capex boom into a cost-of-goods story for every hardware company that is not building the accelerators. Morgan Stanley cut to $360 from $364 and Goldman Sachs to $360 from $370 the same morning. The second-order tells all pointed one way: the SOX traded +5.15% intraday and closed +0.07%; AMD printed $515.62 and closed −1.91%; Micron printed $930.88 and closed −5.93%; SanDisk printed $1,404.99 and closed −5.09%; the FTSE 100 set an all-time high at 10,981.83 and closed −0.27%. Thursday’s forced-covering squeeze was given back in full inside twenty-four hours, which retro-validates Nationwide’s Mark Hackett: “The recent volatility looks more like a positioning event than the start of a fundamental deterioration in the AI story, though the degree of leverage in the space acts like a multiplier for the move.” The macro was the other half. The Q2 employment cost index rose 0.9% against a 0.8% Dow Jones consensus, +3.4% y/y, and final July Michigan sentiment printed 55.2 versus 54.0 expected, with one-year inflation expectations down 0.4pt to 4.2%. The bond market sold the long end: the official par 30-year rose 6 bp to 5.27%, a fresh 19-year closing high, the 20-year 6 bp to 5.28%, the 10-year 7 bp to 4.75% and the 5-year 7 bp to 4.45% — a belly-led bear-steepening on the last day of the month (§6), with WSJ’s Spencer Jakab publishing “Kevin Warsh’s ‘Bear Steepener’ Is No Goldilocks Moment for Stocks” into it and Bloomberg reporting BlackRock’s long-duration Treasury ETF at a 2004 low. Brown Brothers Harriman’s Elias Haddad named the mechanism: the dollar’s support from resilient U.S. activity “is outweighed by Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s failure to turn tough inflation rhetoric into a credible policy, increasing the risk the Fed falls behind the curve.” Overseas: Korea’s Kospi rose 17.9% to 6,595.45, the largest single-day gain in its history, with Samsung +28% and SK Hynix +30% — and yet USD/KRW rose 1.35%, i.e. the won weakened on the day Korean equities had their best session ever (§9). Bitcoin fell 2.8% to $62,930.57, Roblox fell 26.85% on withdrawn guidance, and Trump ordered a fresh attack on Iran as the war entered its sixth month (WSJ). |
| 2 · Market Hot Spots (ranked by tradability) |
1. The SOX round-tripped a 5.15% intraday gain to close +0.07% — Thursday’s squeeze was fully given back in one session, and memory closed red. SOX high 11,885.7, close 11,311.1; AMD high $515.62, close $476.12 (−1.91%); Micron high $930.88, close $822.77 (−5.93%); SanDisk high $1,404.99, close $1,214.83 (−5.09%); Intel high $97.90, close $90.15 (−1.08%); CoreWeave −2.88%, IREN −3.79%. Thursday those names were up 18–31%. A squeeze that gives back its entire move on the next session — into good news from Amazon — confirms a basket placement, not a re-rating. Expression: stay short MU and SNDK against long NVDA or SOXX; Friday paid 8.9 points on MU vs. NVDA. Invalidation: AMD’s Tue 8/4 4:15 p.m. print lifting the complex together.
2. Apple’s warning is a supply warning, and that is worse for the rest of the market than a demand warning. AAPL −7.35% to $308.91 on 127.5m shares, roughly $362bn of market value by Reuters’ pre-bell estimate. Cook — on his last call as CEO before John Ternus takes over — said the shortage of advanced chip manufacturing capacity is restricting production of iPhones, Macs and some iPads and called the shortages “very significant.” Guidance: September-quarter revenue +9% to +11% versus ~12% consensus. The read-across: AI capex is bidding away the leading-edge foundry and memory supply that consumer hardware needs, which shows up as cost inflation and volume constraint for every non-accelerator hardware franchise while the accelerator names keep pricing power. Morgan Stanley $360 from $364; Goldman $360 from $370 — both still ~16.5% above the close, i.e. the sell side calls this timing, not thesis. Watch memory contract pricing and the Aug 5 WDC/SNDK prints.
3. Amazon delivered the quarter the bulls needed and the market still would not broaden. AMZN +15.31%; AWS $42.2bn, +37% y/y versus a 31% bar, the fastest since 2021; 2026 capex $220bn. Wedbush: “The quarter was the cleanest beat among the hyperscalers within our coverage… management also offered the most explicit walk through of how it will achieve ROIC on the capex spend,” target to $310 from $293; KeyCorp $350, JPMorgan $365, BofA $320, Baird $310. And yet Technology −0.49%, Russell 2000 −0.49%, six of eleven sectors red, the SOX flat. Bloomberg’s own framing — “Biggest Wall Street Rotation Since 2020 Shows AI Crowding Risks” — is the honest description.
4. A belly-led bear-steepener on month-end is the most important cross-asset fact of the week. Official par: 5Y +7 bp to 4.45%, 7Y +7 bp to 4.59%, 10Y +7 bp to 4.75%, 20Y +6 bp to 5.28%, 30Y +6 bp to 5.27% (fresh 19-year closing high), 2Y +5 bp to 4.28%. 3M10Y +6 bp to +92; 2s10s +2 bp to +47; 2s30s +1 bp to +99. The belly leading is the signature of a growth-and-inflation repricing rather than a pure term-premium event. Triggers are named: ECI +0.9% vs. +0.8%, WTI back above $84 with Brent near $90, and a Fed that held 9–3. Bloomberg: BlackRock’s “widow maker” long-duration Treasury ETF slid to a 2004 low. Levels to watch: 30Y 5.35% and 10Y 4.80%, above which the multiple — not the sector mix — reprices.
5. Korea printed the largest single-day equity gain in its history and the won went down. Read the currency, not the index. Kospi +17.9% to 6,595.45, Kosdaq +11.6%, Samsung +28%, SK Hynix +30%, Taiex +8%, Nikkei +4% to 64,362.02, after a −17% three-day run. But USD/KRW rose 1.35% to 1,442.92: the won weakened into the best session on record. WSJ reports regulators imposing “increasingly stringent restrictions on single-stock leveraged ETFs tracking SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics” — the marginal buyer is domestic leverage. Fade Korea beta against Taiwan or the SOX; invalidation is USD/KRW below 1,420.
6. Roblox −26.85% to $35.60 was the worst single-day loss in its history and it is a category warning. Missed Q2 daily active users, guided below and withdrew full-year guidance; Bloomberg attributed the DAU miss to “the ongoing impact of new child-safety measures”; Benchmark warned on platform lifecycle decline. Alongside Reddit −7% after hours for failing to announce new AI data-licensing deals and Coinbase −10.73% on a third straight quarterly loss, the pattern is that consumer-internet names re-rated on an AI-adjacent story are being re-rated back down. That is a de-rating, not a squeeze — it does not bounce.
7. The oil complex closed higher on a day the war escalated, and hedge funds were already positioned for it. WTI +0.86% to $84.31 and Brent +0.60% to $89.56; Bloomberg 4 p.m. WTI +1.1% to $84.55, with oil booking its biggest monthly gain since March. Bloomberg the same afternoon: “Hedge Funds Add Bullish Bets on Oil at Fastest Pace Since March.” Trump ordered fresh strikes against Iran as the war entered its sixth month. CBA estimates Hormuz traffic at only 30–35% of pre-war levels, with 50–60% enough to reassert oversupply — the most useful physical threshold on the tape. Energy +0.81% and +33.10% YTD.
8. Chevron and Exxon printed war-inflated profits and paid down debt instead of buying back stock. Chevron’s net income soared to $12bn, a nearly 400% increase on $2.5bn, adjusted EPS $6.06 vs. $5.56; CEO Mike Wirth: “We’re kind of firing on all cylinders, which is good, because the world needs it.” CVX +2.36% to $196.85; Exxon −2%+. Bloomberg: both “plowed blowout profits into debt reduction rather than huge buyback increases, a sign of caution about how long war-driven price rallies will last.” When the producers treat the price as transitory, own the refiners’ crack-spread convexity rather than the integrateds’ earnings beat.
9. Novo Nordisk −8.79% on a failed cardiovascular endpoint is the largest single-stock pipeline event of the week. Ziltivekimab failed to reduce major adverse cardiovascular events versus placebo — biological effect, no statistically meaningful MACE reduction. Shares fell as much as 10% intraday, closing −8.79% at $47.08 on the ADR; Healthcare was the second-worst Finviz group at −1.02%. The read-across runs to every anti-inflammatory cardiovascular thesis in large-cap pharma, and it is a reminder that healthcare’s +9.63% three-month run was built on binary readouts that reverse in a morning.
10. The fades and non-participants were the majority of the tape. The FTSE 100 hit an all-time high of 10,981.83 and closed −0.27% at 10,868.05. The Nasdaq 100 closed 1.18% off its high. Inside the S&P: Coca-Cola −1.02%, UnitedHealth −1.68%, Nike −1.37%, Sherwin-Williams −1.16%, Netflix −2.02%, Goldman Sachs −0.63%, Travelers −0.43%, Visa −0.04% — the defensives sold on Thursday to fund the squeeze did not come back. Rivian −9.63% despite cutting 2026 spending and narrowing loss guidance after the bell is the purest inversion. Universal Music −25% in Amsterdam, its worst day since IPO; SpaceX −3.35% with short interest soaring into a share unlock (Bloomberg).
| 3 · Sector Performance — July 31, 2026 (Finviz classification; rendered page, 6:11 PM ET) |
| Sector | 1-Day | 1-Week | YTD | | Consumer Cyclical | +4.42% | +6.92% | −3.33% | | Communication Services | +3.59% | +4.82% | −0.91% | | Energy | +0.81% | +0.39% | +33.10% | | Industrials | +0.24% | −2.23% | +10.54% | | Financial | −0.12% | +1.16% | +7.23% | | Consumer Defensive | −0.47% | +1.69% | +8.33% | | Technology | −0.49% | −0.05% | +16.61% | | Utilities | −0.69% | −3.69% | +3.61% | | Real Estate | −0.70% | −1.91% | +11.25% | | Healthcare | −1.02% | −0.21% | +4.92% | | Basic Materials | −2.12% | −0.59% | +7.09% |
Six red out of eleven on a +0.70% index day, and Technology itself was one of them — the narrowest sector table of the month. The two green groups that matter are single-stock artefacts: Consumer Cyclical +4.42% is Amazon (+15.31%), which Finviz classifies as Consumer Cyclical rather than Technology, and Communication Services +3.59% is Alphabet (+6.73%) and Meta (+3.28%). Strip those two names and the tape was flat-to-lower. Technology at −0.49% on a day the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.00% is the cleanest statement of what happened: the Nasdaq’s gain came from names Finviz does not count as Technology, while the actual technology complex fell — Apple −7.35%, Micron −5.93%, SanDisk −5.09%, AMD −1.91%, Intel −1.08%, against a flat SOX. Basic Materials −2.12% was the worst group, an unusual pairing with copper +0.56% and gold −1.50% — the miners de-rated with bullion rather than with the industrial metal. Healthcare −1.02% is largely the Novo Nordisk MACE failure. Utilities −0.69% and Real Estate −0.70% on a 7 bp back-up in the 10-year is exactly the rate sensitivity you would expect, and confirms the §6 read: this was a yield event, not a growth event. Energy +0.81% and +33.10% YTD, 16.49 points clear of Technology, remains the widest sector spread of the year. On the week the composition flipped versus the prior week: Consumer Cyclical +6.92% and Communication Services +4.82% led while Utilities −3.69% and Industrials −2.23% lagged — a full megacap-concentration week. Finviz buckets are not official GICS/S&P sector indices.
Reconciliation. Ten of eleven groups reconcile against the prior report’s YTD compounded by Friday’s 1-day move — Energy 1.3203 × 1.0081 = +33.10% vs. 33.10% shown; Technology 1.1716 × 0.9951 = +16.59% vs. 16.61%; Basic Materials +7.06% vs. 7.09%; Financial +7.16% vs. 7.23%; Consumer Cyclical −3.34% vs. −3.33%; Industrials +10.53% vs. 10.54%; Healthcare +4.92%; Real Estate +11.25%; Consumer Defensive +8.36% vs. 8.33%; Utilities +3.61%. Maximum deviation across those ten: 0.07 pt (Financial). The exception is again Communication Services: 0.9530 × 1.0359 = −1.28% versus −0.91% shown, a 0.37-pt gap — a second consecutive drift in the same bucket, consistent with a constituent or weight refresh; disclosed rather than reconciled. | 4 · Movers & Single-Name Catalysts |
All levels and percentages are Investing.com closing prints stamped 15:59:59 ET unless otherwise noted.
Upside
Amazon (AMZN) $271.55, +$36.05, +15.31% on 115.7m shares; range $262.01–$273.23. Q2: net sales $200.6bn (+20% y/y) vs. $196.47bn expected, the first $200bn quarter; AWS $42.2bn, +37% y/y — the fastest since 2021 — against a ~31% consensus, a $169bn annualised run-rate; AWS operating income $16.6bn at a 39.4% margin; total operating income $27.5bn, +43%. CEO Andy Jassy guided 2026 capex to $220bn. Friday actions: Wedbush Outperform, target to $310 from $293 (+14.2% upside to the close); KeyCorp to $350 from $335 (+28.9%); JPMorgan to $365 (+34.4%); BofA to $320 (+17.8%); Baird to $310 (+14.2%). CNBC separately reported Amazon received $600m in tariff refunds.
Alphabet Class A (GOOGL) $356.13, +$22.47, +6.73% on 44.6m shares; Class C (GOOG) $356.62, +6.7% (dual listing, counted once). Catalyst: Google DeepMind released a family of embodied-AI models — Gemini Robotics 2, Gemini Robotics ER 2 and On-Device 2 — on top of the prior week’s cloud-driven Q2 beat. Alphabet also featured in Bloomberg’s “Big Tech Holds $2 Trillion of Spending Commitments for AI Boom.”
Replimune (REPL) +94% to +133% intraday — an FDA advisory committee voted 10–3 in favour of RP1 for advanced melanoma with Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo, a drug the FDA had twice declined to approve; Cantor Fitzgerald upgraded and the FDA decision is due by August 2. Not an S&P 500 constituent; read-across to BMY.
Newell Brands (NWL) +11% to +17.5% — beat Q2 and raised FY EPS guidance to $0.73–$0.77 from $0.56–$0.60. Not an S&P 500 constituent. Monolithic Power (MPWR) +11.4% premarket on a Q2 beat — one of the few semis that held its gain.
Microsoft (MSFT) $465.10, +$14.00, +3.10% on 48.3m shares — second day of follow-through after Thursday’s +15.51%; on track for more than +20% in July, the biggest month since October 2007 (CNBC). As of Wednesday MSFT was up only ~1.5% on the month.
Chevron (CVX) $196.85, +$4.54, +2.36% — Q2 net income $12bn (+~400% y/y); adjusted EPS $6.06 vs. $5.56 expected. Meta (META) $556.71, +$17.68, +3.28% on 24.0m shares, a partial recovery from Thursday’s −7.98%. Alibaba ADR (BABA) $122.28, +5.12% — Bloomberg reported Moonshot has a computing-power agreement with Alibaba for roughly 20,000 Nvidia chips.
Nvidia (NVDA) $200.79, +$5.75, +2.95% on 108.8m shares; range $194.95–$202.00, closed near the high. For the second straight session the index leader out-behaved the squeeze names — NVDA +2.95% against MU −5.93% and SNDK −5.09%, the exact inversion of Thursday. That is the positioning story in two numbers.
Others: Super Micro (SMCI) $28.40, +2.42%; Marvell (MRVL) $187.56, +2.32% after printing $201.35; Cisco (CSCO) $115.98, +2.13%; Salesforce (CRM) $184.03, +1.84%; Oracle (ORCL) $129.87, +1.81%; Verizon (VZ) $46.82, +1.54%; IBM $223.79, +0.92%; McDonald’s (MCD) $270.64, +0.82%; Tesla (TSLA) $311.21, +0.76% — WSJ reported Tesla is considering a sale of its China business; Caterpillar (CAT) $814.81, +0.70%; Palantir (PLTR) $123.06, +0.65%; Honeywell (HON) $243.05, +0.47%; Broadcom (AVGO) $389.28, +0.37% after printing $399.92; P&G $144.49, +0.37%; Merck (MRK) $130.20, +0.32%; TSMC ADR (TSM) $404.35, +0.26% after printing $420.35 — a 4.0% intraday fade; JPMorgan $351.84, +0.28%; J&J $256.41, +0.23%; 3M $176.28, +0.12%; Walmart $111.20, +0.09%; Disney $96.22, +0.06%.
Downside
Apple (AAPL) $308.91, −$24.52, −7.35% on 127.5m shares, the highest volume on the tape; range $300.00–$310.69, closed near the high after trading with a $300 handle. FQ3 beat (EPS $2.02 vs. $1.89 on $109.4bn vs. $108.8bn), but the September guide of +9% to +11% revenue growth against a ~12% bar and “supply constraints” did the damage. Tim Cook, on his final earnings call as CEO before John Ternus succeeds him in September, called the advanced-chip and memory shortages “very significant” and said Apple has limited options; the shortage restricts production of iPhones, Macs and some iPads. Reuters put the pre-bell market-value loss at roughly $361.6bn. Morgan Stanley to $360 from $364 (+16.5% to the close); Goldman Sachs to $360 from $370 (+16.5%) — both after raising into the print.
Roblox (RBLX) $35.60, −$13.07, −26.85% on 62.8m shares — the worst single-day loss in the company’s history; missed Q2 daily active users, guided below and withdrew full-year guidance; Bloomberg cited “the ongoing impact of new child-safety measures,” and Benchmark warned on platform lifecycle decline. Not an S&P 500 constituent.
Coinbase (COIN) $146.02, −$17.56, −10.73% on 19.2m shares — a third consecutive quarterly loss with revenue down again. Rivian (RIVN) $15.21, −9.63% — a full inversion of Thursday’s after-hours gain on reduced 2026 spending. Novo Nordisk ADR (NVO) $47.08, −8.79% — ziltivekimab missed its primary MACE endpoint; fell as much as 10% intraday.
Micron (MU) $822.77, −$51.89, −5.93% on 50.0m shares — printed $930.88 and closed 11.6% off the high, the largest single-name round trip on the tape. SanDisk (SNDK) $1,214.83, −$65.13, −5.09% on 20.7m shares — printed $1,404.99 and closed 13.5% off the high; reports Wed 8/5 4:05 PM.
MasTec (MTZ) −16% to −18% on in-line Q2 results — the data-centre/electrical construction read-across; GoDaddy (GDDY) −6% to −16.4% on light forward revenue guidance and generative-AI disruption concerns. Neither is an S&P 500 constituent.
Strategy (MSTR) $93.28, −4.56%; SpaceX (SPCX) $108.44, −$3.76, −3.35% on 54.9m shares — Bloomberg: “SpaceX Short Interest Soars Ahead of Big Share Unlock, Earnings”; the stock has lost more than 36% in the last month from a June high of $225.64. SpaceX reports Tuesday 8/4 after the close.
Others: IREN $36.81, −3.79% on 58.8m shares; CoreWeave (CRWV) $71.77, −2.88%; Netflix (NFLX) $71.69, −2.02%; AMD $476.12, −1.91% after printing $515.62; UnitedHealth (UNH) $414.40, −1.68%; Nike (NKE) $41.71, −1.37%; Sherwin-Williams (SHW) $340.85, −1.16%; Intel (INTC) $90.15, −1.08% after printing $97.90 on 95.9m shares; Coca-Cola (KO) $87.59, −1.02%; Boeing (BA) $216.14, −2.15%; Goldman Sachs (GS) $1,018.38, −0.63%; Amgen (AMGN) $385.21, −0.63%; Travelers (TRV) $374.36, −0.43%; Home Depot (HD) $331.96, −0.42%; American Express (AXP) $336.25, −0.38%; Visa (V) $366.13, −0.04%. Exxon Mobil (XOM) −2%+ (CNBC) despite a war-inflated Q2 — Bloomberg noted Exxon and Chevron “plowed blowout profits into debt reduction rather than huge buyback increases.”
Universal Music Group −23% to −25% in Amsterdam, a 52-week low and its worst day since IPO, on adjusted EBITDA −0.3% y/y at €674m and subscription revenue +16.6% against a +19% Bloomberg-poll bar; Vivendi −17.8%. Trading was halted. Not U.S.-listed.
Corporate items: Anthropic PBC said its AI models breached three organisations during cybersecurity tests that went awry, a week after a similar OpenAI disclosure. Alimentation Couche-Tard agreed to acquire Żabka Group at about 32.62bn zloty ($8.6bn). BP intends to sell its entire North Sea business. Blackstone agreed to acquire HSBC’s A$36bn ($25bn) Australian loan portfolio, “the largest home loan portfolio transaction globally.” New York City was spared a downgrade by Fitch and Moody’s — “for now.”
| 6 · U.S. Treasury Yields — Official Par Curve (Treasury.gov, 3:30 PM ET) |
| Maturity | 7/31/26 | 7/30/26 | Δ 1-Day (bp) | 7/24/26 | Δ 1-Wk (bp) | | 1M | 3.78 | 3.79 | −1 | 3.80 | −2 | | 1.5M | 3.80 | 3.80 | 0 | 3.88 | −8 | | 2M | 3.85 | 3.84 | +1 | 3.95 | −10 | | 3M | 3.83 | 3.82 | +1 | 3.96 | −13 | | 4M | 3.92 | 3.92 | 0 | 4.04 | −12 | | 6M | 3.98 | 3.98 | 0 | 4.08 | −10 | | 1Y | 4.08 | 4.04 | +4 | 4.14 | −6 | | 2Y | 4.28 | 4.23 | +5 | 4.33 | −5 | | 3Y | 4.34 | 4.30 | +4 | 4.36 | −2 | | 5Y | 4.45 | 4.38 | +7 | 4.43 | +2 | | 7Y | 4.59 | 4.52 | +7 | 4.55 | +4 | | 10Y | 4.75 | 4.68 | +7 | 4.69 | +6 | | 20Y | 5.28 | 5.22 | +6 | 5.18 | +10 | | 30Y | 5.27 | 5.21 | +6 | 5.16 | +11 |
Treasury convention in this table: rising yields shown in red, falling yields in green.
Curve: 2s10s +47 bp (+2 d/d; +11 w/w); 3M10Y +92 bp (+6 d/d; +19 w/w); 2s30s +99 bp (+1 d/d; +16 w/w).
Read — a belly-led bear-steepener, and the belly leading is what distinguishes it from every other selloff of the past two weeks. The largest moves were 5Y, 7Y and 10Y, all +7 bp, with the 20Y and 30Y +6 bp and the 2Y +5 bp, while the bill sector barely moved (1M −1, 1.5M 0, 4M 0, 6M 0). When the 5-to-10-year sector leads a selloff, the market is repricing the expected average path of the policy rate over the medium term, not merely the compensation for holding duration — a growth-and-inflation repricing, different in kind from Wednesday’s pure term-premium shock, when the 20Y and 30Y jumped 10–11 bp while the 2Y fell 4 bp. Friday’s triggers are named and dated: Q2 ECI +0.9% versus +0.8% consensus (+3.4% y/y), the last wage read before the 8/7 payroll; crude closing higher with Brent near $90 and oil booking its biggest monthly gain since March; and a Fed that held 9–3 six days earlier with three dissents. The result: the 30-year set a fresh 19-year closing high at 5.27%, the 20-year at 5.28% and the 10-year reached 4.75% — on a day the S&P 500 rose 0.70% and the VIX fell to 15.99. Equity vol is at the lows of the episode while the long end is at the highs; that gap is the most stretched relationship in the cross-asset table. Bloomberg’s corroboration: BlackRock’s long-duration Treasury ETF slid to a 2004 low, and WSJ’s Spencer Jakab titled Friday’s column “Kevin Warsh’s ‘Bear Steepener’ Is No Goldilocks Moment for Stocks.”
On the week the shape is a textbook bear-steepening around a pivot near the 3-year. The bill sector rallied hard (3M −13 bp, 4M −12, 2M −10, 6M −10, 1.5M −8) while the 5Y rose 2, the 7Y 4, the 10Y 6, the 20Y 10 and the 30Y 11. In one week the market cut roughly 13 bp from the three-month bill — the tenor that prices September most directly — and added 11 bp to the thirty-year. Friday sharpened it: the front end is no longer rallying (2Y +5 bp on the day, only −5 bp on the week versus −14 bp the week before), so the disinflation trade funding the steepener has stopped working while the term-premium leg keeps going. Cross-check against §8: CME’s cumulative September hike probability rose to 72.1% from 63.4% a day earlier, consistent with the 1Y (+4), 2Y (+5) and 3Y (+4) moves being policy repricing rather than supply.
Vendor note. Bloomberg’s 4 p.m. real-time mark had the 10-year +3 bp at 4.71%, its quote board showed 4.73, and the official 3:30 p.m. par close is 4.75% (+7 bp). This is a baseline-and-timing artefact, not a level disagreement: Bloomberg measures from its own prior-evening mark and stops at 4 p.m.; Treasury measures 3:30 to 3:30. Direction is identical across all three and the magnitude ordering is preserved. Official par figures are used throughout; weekly change is computed against Friday 7/24. |
| 7 · U.S. Macroeconomic Calendar |
Current week (Jul 27–31) — all released
| Date (ET) | Release | Actual | Consensus / Prior | Take | | Mon 7/27 8:30 | Advance Durable Goods, June | +0.3% m/m (ex-transport +0.6%) | vs. +2.1% cons.; −4.0% May | Clear miss; computers & electronics +3.1% vs. transportation −13.5% | | Tue 7/28 10:00 | Conference Board Consumer Confidence, July | 90.8 | vs. 92.0 cons.; 92.2 June | Soft but backward-looking | | Wed 7/29 10:30 | EIA Weekly Petroleum Status | Crude −7.17 mb; Cushing −771k | prior week also a large draw | Physical corroboration behind the crude bid; Hormuz flows 30–35% of normal (CBA) | | Wed 7/29 2:00 PM | FOMC + Warsh press conference | Held 3.50–3.75%; 9–3 (Hammack, Kashkari, Logan dissent for +25 bp) | Hold was the base case | The credibility event driving §6/§8; the three dissenters warned publicly that waiting risks “even more aggressive moves later” | | Thu 7/30 8:30 | GDP, 1st release, Q2 | +1.5% annualised; private domestic final sales +3.9% | vs. +1.8% cons.; +2.1% Q1 | Headline miss, resilient private core — the split that keeps both camps alive | | Thu 7/30 8:30 | PCE Deflator, June | Headline −0.1% m/m, +3.7% y/y; core +0.1% m/m, +3.3% y/y | core vs. +0.2% / +3.3% | Benign; core undershot by a tenth on the month | | Thu 7/30 8:30 | Initial Claims | 197,000 (from 188,000); continuing 1.782m | — | Off the multi-decade low, still historically tight | | Fri 7/31 8:30 | Employment Cost Index, Q2 | +0.9% q/q; +3.4% y/y | vs. +0.8% (Dow Jones) cons. | The hawkish surprise of the week and the proximate cause of the belly-led bear-steepener (§6). A 0.9% quarterly print annualises to ~3.7%; the 3.4% annual pace sits just below the 3.5% CPI gain | | Fri 7/31 10:00 | Michigan Consumer Survey, Final July | 55.2, +11.5% m/m; 1-yr inflation expectations 4.2% (−0.4pt, lowest since March); 5-yr 3.3% | vs. 54.0 cons. | Beat. Joanne Hsu: sentiment is “11% below a year ago, reflecting a generally somber view of the economy amid five years of elevated inflation.” The 0.4pt fall in one-year expectations while pump prices stay elevated is the week’s most dovish datapoint |
Next week (Aug 3–7) — jobs week (NY Fed official August calendar, re-verified this session)
| Date (ET) | Release | Sensitivity | | Mon 8/3 10:00 | ISM Manufacturing, July; Construction Spending | High — the first hard read on the post-oil-spike cycle and the first test of whether Friday’s bear-steepener extends. Prices-paid is the line that matters after a month of Brent near $90 | | Tue 8/4 8:30 / 10:00 | Advance International Trade in Goods; Trade Balance; JOLTS, June; Manufacturing Shipments & Orders | Medium/High — tariff pass-through shows up in trade first; JOLTS is the tightness cross-check on a 197k claims print and on Friday’s 0.9% ECI | | Wed 8/5 8:15 / 9:00 / 10:00 | ADP National Employment, July; NY Fed Labor Market Tightness Index; ISM Non-Manufacturing (Services), July | High — services prices-paid is the transmission line from fuel and wages into core inflation and the most Fed-relevant number of the week before Friday | | Thu 8/6 8:30 / 10:00 / 11:30 | Initial Claims; Productivity & Costs (Preliminary), Q2; Global Supply Chain Pressure Index; Wholesale Trade | High — unit labour costs confirm or refute Friday’s ECI; the GSCPI is unusually relevant with Hormuz at 30–35% of normal and Apple publicly flagging component shortages (§4) | | Fri 8/7 8:30 | Employment Situation, July (payrolls) | Very High — the first payroll report after a 9–3 hold, and the largest scheduled risk of the month | | Fri 8/7 11:00 / 12:45 | Survey of Consumer Expectations; NY Fed Staff Nowcast | Medium |
Beyond next week the NY Fed calendar puts CPI on Wednesday 8/12 and PPI plus claims on Thursday 8/13, with NAR existing home sales Tuesday 8/11 — the August inflation sequence starts eight sessions from now.
| Look-ahead framing. Friday resolved the wage question hawkishly and the expectations question dovishly, and the market chose to trade the wage print: the belly sold off 7 bp while the front end priced the September hike up to 72.1% on CME’s own board. The asymmetry into next week is therefore inverted versus last week. A hot ISM prices-paid on Monday or a hot ISM Services prices-paid on Wednesday now lands on a curve that has already stopped rallying at the front — it would push the September hike toward the high-70s and drag the 10-year through 4.80%, the level at which the equity multiple, not the sector mix, has to reprice. A soft payroll on Friday 8/7 is the only datapoint next week that can un-steepen this curve, and even then it works on the 2Y and the belly, not on the 30Y, because the long end’s move is about credibility and supply rather than the next two data points. Hierarchy: ISM Manufacturing prices-paid (Mon) → ADP and ISM Services prices-paid (Wed) → unit labour costs (Thu) → payrolls (Fri 8/7), with AMD (Tue 4:15 PM), SpaceX (Tue after close), Eli Lilly / Disney / Uber / CVS (Wed BMO) and Western Digital / SanDisk (Wed AMC) as the equity-side catalysts. Where a verified consensus was not obtainable, the sensitivity column describes market sensitivity rather than inventing an expectation figure. |
| 8 · Fed Funds Futures & Rate Path (CME FedWatch / Investing.com Fed Rate Monitor) |
Current target range: 3.50–3.75% (held 9–3 on 7/29; Hammack, Kashkari and Logan dissented for +25 bp; IORB 3.65%). Chair: Kevin Warsh. Next FOMC: Wednesday, September 16, 2026, 2:00 PM ET. Investing.com cards timestamped Jul 31, 2026 05:55 PM EDT; CME September card read live at ~6:05 PM ET (contract ZQU6, expiry 30 Sep 2026, mid price 96.2700, prior volume 49,400, prior open interest 212,586).
CME FedWatch headline — September 16, 2026 meeting
| Target rate (bps) | NOW | 1 DAY (30 Jul) | 1 WEEK (24 Jul) | 1 MONTH (30 Jun) | | Ease (below 350) | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | | 350–375 — hold (current) | 27.9% | 36.6% | 18.3% | 32.2% | | 375–400 (+25 bp) | 72.1% | 63.4% | 54.5% | 50.6% | | 400–425 (+50 bp) | 0.0% | 0.0% | 27.2% | 17.2% | | Cumulative hike (≥375) | 72.1% | 63.4% | 81.7% | 67.8% |
Column sums: 100.0 / 100.0 / 100.0 / 100.0. Provenance, stated plainly. NOW is read directly off CME’s live September card (EASE 0.0% / NO CHANGE 27.9% / HIKE 72.1%). CME’s Compare view plots the 1D, 1W and 1M series as bars but publishes no numeric table, so: 1 DAY reproduces the values this report published yesterday from the same CME tool, and the Compare bar heights match them; the 1 MONTH series is legended “1M (30 Jun 2026)” — the identical reference date used yesterday — so 32.2 / 50.6 / 17.2 is carried unchanged and again matches the bars; 1 WEEK (24 Jul) is taken from Investing.com’s independent previous-week column for the same meeting (18.3 / 54.5 / 27.2), inside the read tolerance of CME’s own 24-July bars. No figure here is estimated without a corroborating source.
Reconciling CME against Investing.com, in-text and not in a footnote. For the same September meeting, CME puts the hold at 27.9% and the +25 bp at 72.1%; Investing.com puts them at 34.1% and 65.9% — a 6.2-point gap, an order of magnitude wider than yesterday’s 0.7 point. The cause is fully identified and it is a price difference, not a methodology dispute: Investing.com’s September card shows a future price of 96.290; CME’s meeting panel shows a mid price of 96.2700 — a 2.0 bp difference in the same ZQU6 contract. Because the September meeting falls on the 16th, only about 14 of the month’s 30 days carry the post-meeting rate under CME’s day-weighted construction, so each basis point of ZQU6 is amplified roughly two-fold into the implied post-meeting rate and therefore into the probability of a 25 bp step; 2.0 bp of contract price is comfortably enough to move the headline by 6 points. Two secondary contributors: the timestamps are ten minutes apart on a month-end session, and Investing.com’s “previous day” column is a fixed daily snapshot, which is why its previous-day hold of 39.6% differs from CME’s 1-DAY of 36.6%. Use one vendor’s columns consistently within a comparison and never mix them.
(1) 2026 meeting distributions (Investing.com current / [prev-day] / [prev-week], %)
| Meeting | 3.50–3.75 (hold) | 3.75–4.00 (+25) | 4.00–4.25 (+50) | 4.25–4.50 (+75) | Cumulative hike | | Sep 16, 2026 | 34.1 / [39.6] / [18.3] | 65.9 / [60.4] / [54.5] | 0.0 / [0.0] / [27.2] | 0.0 / [0.0] / [0.0] | 65.9 / [60.4] / [81.7] | | Oct 28, 2026 | 23.2 / [28.7] / [12.8] | 55.7 / [54.7] / [43.7] | 21.2 / [16.7] / [35.3] | 0.0 / [0.0] / [8.1] | 76.9 / [71.4] / [87.1] | | Dec 9, 2026 | 12.6 / [17.6] / [7.8] | 40.8 / [44.7] / [31.7] | 37.0 / [31.3] / [38.6] | 9.7 / [6.4] / [18.7] | 87.5 / [82.4] / [92.2] |
Row sums: September 100.0 / 100.0 / 100.0; October 100.1 / 100.1 / 99.9; December 100.1 / 100.0 / 100.0. No easing is priced at any 2026 meeting in any column — 0.0% below 3.50% throughout. Contract prices: Sep 96.290, Oct 96.195, Dec 96.040. December also carries +100 bp at 0.0% / [0.0%] / [3.2%].
Multi-day momentum. On CME’s cumulative basis the September hike arc is 81.7% a week ago → 67.8% a month ago → 63.4% a day ago → 72.1% now: up 8.7 points on the day, down 9.6 points on the week, up 4.3 points on the month. On Investing.com’s series the September +25 bp bucket reads 65.9%, up from 60.4% a day earlier and 54.5% a week earlier — but the week-ago comparison misleads on its own, because on 24 July the market also carried a 27.2% chance of an immediate +50 bp, for a cumulative 81.7%. Friday did not restore last week’s hawkishness; it restored the first hike while leaving the second one dead. October and December say the same with more resolution: October cumulative 76.9% versus 87.1% a week ago; December cumulative 87.5% versus 92.2%; December ≥+50 bp 46.7% versus 60.5%; December ≥+75 bp 9.7% versus 21.9%. The distribution has compressed toward exactly one hike, delivered sooner.
(2) 2027 meeting path (modal range, probability, cumulative above/below current 3.50–3.75%)
| Meeting | Modal range | Prob. | Cum. above 3.75% | Cum. below 3.50% | Hold | | Jan 27, 2027 | 4.00–4.25 | 38.0% | 90.7% | 0.0% | 9.3% | | Mar 17, 2027 | 4.00–4.25 | 36.6% | 93.6% | 0.0% | 6.4% | | Apr 28, 2027 | 4.00–4.25 | 35.1% | 94.4% | 0.0% | 5.6% | | Jun 9, 2027 | 4.00–4.25 | 34.6% | 94.6% | 0.0% | 5.3% | | Jul 28, 2027 | 4.00–4.25 | 34.4% | 94.2% | 0.1% | 5.7% | | Sep 15, 2027 | 4.00–4.25 | 33.6% | 92.1% | 0.6% | 7.2% | | Oct 27, 2027 | 4.00–4.25 | 32.9% | 90.3% | 1.2% | 8.4% | | Dec 8, 2027 | 4.00–4.25 | 31.3% | 86.4% | 2.5% | 11.0% |
Row sums: January 100.0; March 100.0; April 100.0; June 99.9; July 100.0; September 99.9; October 99.9; December 99.9. Contract prices: Jan 96.000, Mar 95.910, Apr 95.865, Jun 95.825, Jul 95.825, Sep 95.840, Oct 95.855, Dec 95.895.
The 2027 path now peaks earlier and higher than it did a day ago. The modal range is 4.00–4.25% at every single 2027 meeting including January — yesterday January’s mode was still 3.75–4.00% — and cumulative above-range probability tops out at 94.6% at the June 2027 meeting before decaying to 86.4% by December 2027. The first meaningful easing probability appears late and small: 0.1% below 3.50% by July 2027, 0.6% by September, 1.2% by October, 2.5% by December. The strip prices two hikes held through most of 2027, with a first cut barely visible at the end of the horizon — and the forward contract prices bottom at 95.825 in June/July 2027 and then rise again, which is the futures market drawing a terminal rate around 4.15–4.20% in mid-2027. (3) Year-end probability ladders
Year-end 2026 (December 9, 2026 meeting) — current / [prev-day] / [prev-week]
| Outcome | Range | Probability | | −75 bp (2.75–3.00) | cut | 0.0% / [0.0%] / [0.0%] | | −50 bp (3.00–3.25) | cut | 0.0% / [0.0%] / [0.0%] | | −25 bp (3.25–3.50) | cut | 0.0% / [0.0%] / [0.0%] | | Hold (3.50–3.75) | unchanged | 12.6% / [17.6%] / [7.8%] | | +25 bp (3.75–4.00) | modal | 40.8% / [44.7%] / [31.7%] | | +50 bp (4.00–4.25) | | 37.0% / [31.3%] / [38.6%] | | +75 bp (4.25–4.50) | | 9.7% / [6.4%] / [18.7%] | | +100 bp (4.50–4.75) | | 0.0% / [0.0%] / [3.2%] | | +125 bp or more | | 0.0% / [0.0%] / [0.0%] |
Cumulative: ≥+25 bp 87.5% / [82.4%] / [92.2%]; ≥+50 bp 46.7% / [37.7%] / [60.5%]; ≥+75 bp 9.7% / [6.4%] / [21.9%]; ≥+100 bp 0.0% / [0.0%] / [3.2%]; any cut 0.0% in all three columns. Column sums 100.1 / 100.0 / 100.0. Note the prev-week column’s mode was +50 bp (38.6%), not +25 bp — the centre of mass has moved down one step in a week even as the probability of at least one hike stayed above 87%.
Year-end 2027 (December 8, 2027 meeting) — current / [prev-day] / [prev-week]
| Outcome | Range | Probability | | −100 bp (2.50–2.75) | cut | 0.0% / [0.0%] / [0.0%] | | −75 bp (2.75–3.00) | cut | 0.0% / [0.0%] / [0.0%] | | −50 bp (3.00–3.25) | cut | 0.2% / [0.5%] / [0.3%] | | −25 bp (3.25–3.50) | cut | 2.3% / [4.0%] / [2.5%] | | Hold (3.50–3.75) | unchanged | 11.0% / [16.1%] / [10.6%] | | +25 bp (3.75–4.00) | | 25.9% / [30.6%] / [24.4%] | | +50 bp (4.00–4.25) | modal | 31.3% / [29.1%] / [30.2%] | | +75 bp (4.25–4.50) | | 20.4% / [14.8%] / [21.2%] | | +100 bp (4.50–4.75) | | 7.3% / [4.1%] / [8.6%] | | +125 bp (4.75–5.00) | | 1.4% / [0.6%] / [2.0%] | | +150 bp (5.00–5.25) | | 0.1% / [0.0%] / [0.2%] | | +175 bp or more | | 0.0% / [0.0%] / [0.0%] |
Cumulative: ≥+25 bp 86.4% / [79.2%] / [86.6%]; ≥+50 bp 60.5% / [48.6%] / [62.2%]; ≥+75 bp 29.2% / [19.5%] / [32.0%]; ≥+100 bp 8.8% / [4.7%] / [10.8%]; any cut 2.5% / [4.5%] / [2.8%]. Column sums 99.9 / 99.8 / 100.0 — no column was normalised.
(4) Rate-path interpretation
One-day changes — the largest hawkish repricing since the FOMC. Every 2026 and 2027 card moved the same way and by a similar magnitude. September: CME cumulative 63.4% → 72.1% (+8.7 pt); Investing.com 60.4% → 65.9% (+5.5 pt) with the hold falling from 39.6% to 34.1%. October cumulative 71.4% → 76.9%, with the +50 bp bucket rising from 16.7% to 21.2%. December-2026 cumulative 82.4% → 87.5%, with ≥+50 bp jumping from 37.7% to 46.7% (+9.0 pt) and ≥+75 bp from 6.4% to 9.7%. In 2027 the whole distribution shifted up a step: December-2027 ≥+25 bp 79.2% → 86.4%, ≥+50 bp 48.6% → 60.5%, ≥+75 bp 19.5% → 29.2%, while any-cut fell from 4.5% to 2.5% and the January-2027 mode moved from 3.75–4.00% to 4.00–4.25%. One data point did most of that work.
One-week changes, and the arc that matters. A week ago the market priced 81.7% cumulative September hike odds including a 27.2% chance of an immediate +50 bp; today it prices 72.1% with 0.0% at +50 bp. Over the same week December-2026 ≥+50 bp fell from 60.5% to 46.7% and ≥+75 bp from 21.9% to 9.7%, and December-2027 ≥+75 bp from 32.0% to 29.2%. Yet across that same week the 30-year rose 11 bp to a 19-year closing high of 5.27%, the 20-year rose 10 bp, the 10-year 6 bp, and 2s30s steepened 16 bp (§6). The front end has priced out the second hike and the long end has got cheaper anyway — for the third consecutive week. Friday’s difference is that the front end stopped helping: the 2Y rose 5 bp and the 3M rose 1 bp, so for the first time in the sequence both legs of the curve sold off together. That is the transition from “relocation of tightening into the term premium” to “a straightforward hawkish repricing,” and it is why equities managed only 52 index points on a blowout Amazon quarter.
The named macro hooks. (i) Q2 ECI +0.9% q/q against +0.8% expected, +3.4% y/y — a 0.9% quarterly print annualises near 3.7%, and it is the last wage read before payrolls. (ii) Core PCE 3.3% y/y — 130 bp above target and unchanged on the year. (iii) Oil booked its biggest monthly gain since March, with Brent near $90, WTI back above $84, heating oil +97.67% y/y and gasoline +84.61% y/y on the TradingEconomics board — the level of fuel costs is what feeds core services, and Hormuz traffic is still only 30–35% of pre-war levels with Trump ordering fresh strikes on Iran. (iv) Michigan one-year inflation expectations fell 0.4 pt to 4.2%, the lowest since March, five-year unchanged at 3.3% — the one dovish input, and the market ignored it. (v) China’s official manufacturing PMI at 49.2, the first sub-50 since February, and the BoJ’s warning that Japanese core inflation will run “clearly above” 2%.
Base case and tails. Base case (≈72% on CME, ≈66% on Investing.com): +25 bp on September 16 to 3.75–4.00%. Hawkish tail (≈47%): two or more hikes by December 2026 (December ≥+50 bp 46.7%, up 9 points in a day) — requires ISM prices-paid on Monday and Wednesday to confirm the fuel-and-wage passthrough. Second hawkish tail (≈10%): three hikes by year-end. Dovish tail (≈13%): no hike at all in 2026 (December hold 12.6%, down from 17.6% in a day) — which now requires a genuine growth shock, because the inflation shock has been priced in, not out. There is still no cut priced anywhere in 2026: 0.0% at every meeting, in every column.
Practical trading implication, tied to the next catalyst. The market has moved from pricing whether the Fed hikes to pricing when. That makes Monday 10:00 a.m. ISM Manufacturing prices-paid and Wednesday 10:00 a.m. ISM Services prices-paid the two highest-convexity prints of the week, because they land on a September card with almost no room left to price a first hike and would have to start rebuilding the second one. Expression: own steepeners in the belly (5s30s) rather than outright duration, and hold September-meeting-dated payer structures rather than fed funds outrights — the outright is 72% priced, the second hike only 47%. Invalidation: a payroll print below ~75k on Friday 8/7, which takes the September card back under 60% and hands the belly back the 7 bp it lost. A desk-style view for institutional readers, not personalized investment advice. |
| 9 · FX — Levels and Moves (TradingEconomics board, Jul/31 stamp; spot, U.S. evening) |
| Pair | Level | 1-Day | 1-Week | YTD | Context | | DXY | 99.781 | −0.08% | −1.66% | +1.48% | Second consecutive sub-100 close. The dollar fell more than 1% in July, its worst month since April (Investing.com); Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index “little changed” on the day | | EUR/USD | 1.15188 | −0.04% | +1.34% | −1.89% | Bloomberg 4 p.m. 1.1527; euro-zone Q2 GDP beat at +0.4% last week and an ECB hike is treated as near-certain | | USD/JPY | 157.395 | −1.31% | −3.90% | +0.41% | The biggest weekly yen gain since July 2024. Bloomberg 4 p.m. 158.82 (yen +0.4%); CNBC session low 158.15. BoJ held 1.00% (8–1) but warned core inflation will run “clearly above” 2% | | GBP/USD | 1.34820 | +0.12% | +1.31% | +0.16% | Bloomberg 4 p.m. 1.3475; the U.K. 10-year rose 7 bp to 5.05% — sterling is being paid for yield, not growth | | USD/CHF | 0.80646 | +0.31% | −1.43% | +1.71% | The franc was the weakest major on the day — the haven did not bid despite fresh U.S. strikes on Iran | | USD/KRW | 1,442.92 | +1.35% | −1.14% | +0.16% | The won weakened 1.35% on the day the Kospi rose 17.9% — the most informative cross on the board. Still −6.96% on the month | | USD/CNY | 6.75168 | +0.06% | −0.29% | −3.22% | Essentially unchanged despite a 49.2 manufacturing PMI, the first contraction since February. Offshore CNH is not published on this board | | USD/TWD | 32.3050 | −0.30% | −0.10% | +3.05% | The Taiwan dollar firmed with the Taiex +8% — the opposite of Korea | | AUD/USD | 0.70182 | −0.13% | +0.65% | +5.18% | Best-performing G10 currency of the year; the China PMI miss capped it | | USD/CAD | 1.40132 | +0.05% | −0.56% | +2.13% | Crude up, loonie flat — the correlation is not working |
Take — read the contrarian crosses, because the majors did nothing. The dollar index moved 8 basis points on a day the 10-year yield rose 7 bp and the September hike probability rose 8.7 points on CME. A currency that will not rally on a hawkish rates repricing is telling you the repricing is being read as a credibility problem, not a policy advantage — precisely Brown Brothers Harriman’s Elias Haddad: the tailwind from resilient U.S. activity “is outweighed by Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s failure to turn tough inflation rhetoric into a credible policy, increasing the risk the Fed falls behind the curve in containing inflation.” That is the FX market’s version of the §6 bear-steepener.
The two crosses that carry information are USD/KRW and USD/CHF, and both cut against the consensus read. The won fell 1.35% on the day the Kospi posted the largest one-day gain in its history. If foreign money had been the buyer of that +17.9%, KRW would have risen; instead it sold off, corroborating WSJ’s reporting that the marginal bid came from domestic single-stock leveraged ETFs that regulators have been progressively restricting. Practically: do not treat the Kospi move as a global risk signal — it is a local leverage signal, and the honest hedge for anyone long Korean semis into next week is short KRW, not long KRW. Meanwhile USD/CHF rose 0.31%, making the franc the weakest major on a day Trump ordered fresh strikes on Iran. A haven that does not bid on an escalation headline is a haven the market has stopped believing needs to be owned — a hawkish datapoint for risk over the weekend, because it means positioning is not hedged for the tail.
The yen is the one genuine trend. USD/JPY −1.31% on the day and −3.90% on the week, with the MOF having intervened earlier in the week (UBS’s Paul Donovan: “This may have been more about the pace of weakness than any specific level”) and the BoJ holding at 1.00% while flagging core inflation “clearly above” 2%. The second-order read is a useful negative result: a 3.9% weekly yen appreciation alongside a +1.05% S&P week is not the classic carry-unwind pairing, so the funding-currency channel is not what drove July’s AI drawdown. Anyone attributing the semiconductor rout to carry unwind has the mechanism wrong.
Quote basis: all pairs are TradingEconomics spot marks carrying a Jul/31 date stamp, pulled at the U.S. evening; Bloomberg’s 4 p.m. New York marks are shown inline where they differ. The vendors differ most on USD/JPY (157.395 vs. 158.82) because the yen kept appreciating after the 4 p.m. equity close on intervention speculation. Directionally they agree; use one basis consistently. |
| 10 · Commodities — Settles, Changes and Drivers |
| Contract | Level | 1-Day | 1-Week | Month | YTD | Driver | | WTI crude (front) | $84.31 | +0.86% | — | biggest monthly gain since March | — | Rigzone live board; Bloomberg 4 p.m.: +1.1% to $84.55. Hormuz transits recovering but only to 30–35% of pre-war levels (CBA) | | Brent crude (front) | $89.56 | +0.60% | — | ~+20% (Zaye Capital est.) | — | Rigzone live board; Saxo noted October Brent near $85 and September WTI near $81.60 early Friday before the U.S. session bid it back | | Natural gas | $2.7920/MMBtu | +1.23% | −3.32% | −13.29% | −24.25% | The only major energy contract down on the month; storage comfortable, no war premium | | Gasoline | $3.1585/gal | +0.87% | −6.99% | +7.24% | +84.61% | Weekly collapse as Hormuz flows resumed; the YTD level is the core-services inflation problem | | Heating oil / distillate | $4.1936/gal | +1.56% | +0.31% | +30.32% | +97.67% | The tightest barrel in the world — the crack that took four U.S. refiners to all-time highs on Thursday | | Gold (spot) | $4,042.00 | −1.50% | −0.25% | +0.26% | −6.43% | Bloomberg 4 p.m. spot $4,046.96 (−1.4%) — agreement within 0.12%. Sold with the 7 bp rise in yields | | Silver | $57.558/oz | −2.46% | −0.73% | −2.58% | −19.23% | Higher beta to the rate move than gold, as usual | | Copper | $6.4803/lb | +0.56% | +2.44% | +5.83% | +14.05% | Up on the day China printed a sub-50 PMI — supply still dominating demand | | Platinum | $1,654.50/oz | −0.34% | +3.14% | +3.41% | −20.07% | | | Palladium | $1,277.00/oz | −2.41% | +1.87% | +4.37% | −22.68% | |
Basis caveats, stated up front. Metals, natural gas and refined products are TradingEconomics board marks carrying a Jul/31 date stamp, on one consistent vendor basis, with the column order verified programmatically as Price | Chg | %Chg | Weekly | Monthly | YTD | YoY | Date before any figure was quoted. Crude is deliberately shown on a different basis. The TradingEconomics board printed WTI $86.800 (+3.84%) and Brent $90.240 (+3.87%) — figures implying prior settles of $83.59 and $86.88 and sitting $2.25–$2.50 above Bloomberg’s 4 p.m. mark, Rigzone’s live board and CNBC’s intraday September-WTI quotes; a TradingEconomics search snapshot the same evening returned Brent $87.84 (+1.11%), contradicting its own board. Because the vendor is internally inconsistent on crude, its crude figures are withheld and the Rigzone/Bloomberg marks are used; those two agree to within 0.3%. Note also that “front month” is genuinely ambiguous this week — September WTI and October Brent are the actively traded contracts, which is why several wires printed $81–$83 in the morning and $84–$85 by the close.
Take — positioning is the risk now, not the fundamentals. Bloomberg’s afternoon headline is the whole trade: “Hedge Funds Add Bullish Bets on Oil at Fastest Pace Since March.” That length was added into a month in which oil booked its biggest gain since March and on a day when Trump ordered fresh strikes against Iran as the war entered its sixth month while simultaneously claiming progress on a Gaza disarmament deal that Saxo called “a potential breakthrough after years of conflict.” The two headlines point in opposite directions and both are live over a weekend with no U.S. session. The asymmetry is unattractive for new longs: CBA’s estimate that Hormuz flows have recovered to 30–35% of pre-war levels and that 50–60% would be enough to reassert oversupply defines a de-escalation gap worth several dollars, against an escalation tail already partly in the price at $89.56 Brent.
The cleaner expression remains the crack, not the barrel. Distillate is up +30.32% on the month and +97.67% year-on-year while natural gas is −13.29% on the month — that spread is the physical shortage, and it is why PBF, Delek, Par Pacific and HF Sinclair all closed at all-time highs on Thursday with Valero, Marathon Petroleum and Phillips 66 near theirs, and why PBF’s Q2 came in at $6.22 ex-items against a $4.15 FactSet estimate on $11.7bn of revenue versus $9.6bn. The corroborating tell from the producers themselves: Exxon and Chevron both directed war-inflated cash to debt reduction rather than to buybacks — Bloomberg read that as “a sign of caution about how long war-driven price rallies will last,” and it is the most credible bearish signal on crude available this week.
Metals — the rate move did the work. Gold −1.50% and silver −2.46% on a day the 10-year and 5-year each rose 7 bp is a clean real-yield reaction, and it happened despite an escalation headline — the same non-response the Swiss franc gave in §9. The full precious complex shows the same shape: YTD gold −6.43%, silver −19.23%, platinum −20.07%, palladium −22.68% against year-on-year gains of +20.19%, +55.44%, +25.68% and +5.84% — i.e. the precious metals peaked around the turn of the year and have been giving it back all of 2026, a coherent vendor series rather than an error, but the opposite of the “war and debasement” narrative most desks are running. Copper +0.56% on the day China printed a 49.2 manufacturing PMI is the standout: the red metal is trading its own supply constraint (+46.74% year-on-year), not Chinese demand. |
| 11 · Trading Views (desk-style; not personalized investment advice) |
Each idea states the expression, the catalyst that resolves it, and the invalidation. Claude is not a licensed financial advisor; sizing and suitability are the reader’s own.
1. Stay short the memory squeeze against the liquid leader — the pair paid twice in two sessions with opposite signs. Expression: short MU and SNDK, long NVDA or SOXX, beta-weighted rather than dollar-neutral. Why: Thursday MU +18.36% and SNDK +25.99% versus NVDA +2.65%; Friday MU −5.93% and SNDK −5.09% versus NVDA +2.95% — an 8.9- and 8.0-point reversal in one session, with both names printing new intraday highs ($930.88 and $1,404.99) before closing near the lows: a basket being distributed, not accumulated. Catalyst: AMD Tuesday 8/4 4:15 p.m., then Western Digital and SanDisk Wednesday 8/5. Invalidation: AMD’s data-centre revenue beating by enough to lift the whole complex together, or a memory contract-price print validating the 2027 DRAM demand case.
2. Own the belly steepener, not outright duration. Expression: 5s30s steepener in cash or futures; alternatively pay 5-year and receive 30-year in swaps. Why: Friday was belly-led (5Y, 7Y, 10Y all +7 bp versus 20Y/30Y +6 and 2Y +5) but the week was long-end-led (30Y +11, 20Y +10, 10Y +6, 5Y +2, 2Y −5), and both legs are now selling off. With September priced at 72.1% on CME and the whole 2027 strip modal at 4.00–4.25%, outright duration has no carry and a live event risk; the steepener isolates the term-premium and credibility trade that is actually working. Catalyst: ISM Manufacturing prices-paid Monday, ISM Services prices-paid Wednesday, payrolls Friday 8/7. Invalidation: payrolls below ~75k, or a 30-year auction concession reversing above 5.35%.
3. Fade Korea beta; express Asian semiconductor exposure through Taiwan. Expression: short Kospi/EWY, long Taiex/EWT or TSM, FX-hedged. Why: the Kospi’s record +17.9% came with USD/KRW +1.35% (won weaker) — domestic leverage, not foreign inflow — while USD/TWD fell 0.30% as the Taiex rose 8%. WSJ documents regulators tightening rules on the single-stock leveraged ETFs that drove the move. Catalyst: the Sunday-night futures reopen and the first Korean session after a −17% / +17.9% round trip. Invalidation: USD/KRW breaking below 1,420, confirming genuine foreign buying.
4. Own the distillate crack, not the barrel. Expression: long VLO / MPC / PSX (or DINO / PBF for higher beta) against short WTI futures or an integrated-producer hedge. Why: heating oil +30.32% on the month and +97.67% year-on-year versus natural gas −13.29% on the month; four refiners closed at all-time highs Thursday; PBF printed $6.22 ex-items against $4.15 expected on $11.7bn versus $9.6bn. Meanwhile Exxon and Chevron chose debt paydown over buybacks — the operators think the crude price is transitory but said nothing negative about refining margins. Catalyst: the Wednesday EIA report (distillate stocks) and any Hormuz normalisation headline, which hurts crude longs far more than crack longs. Invalidation: a distillate build of more than ~3mb, or an OPEC+ supply announcement steepening the crude curve into contango.
5. Short the “AI-adjacent consumer internet” cohort into their prints. Expression: short a small basket of consumer-internet names whose multiples were re-rated on an AI story they have not monetised, against long QQQ or XLC. Why: Roblox −26.85% on withdrawn guidance (worst day on record), Reddit −7% after hours for failing to announce new AI data-licensing deals, Coinbase −10.73% on a third straight quarterly loss, GoDaddy down on generative-AI disruption of its core. This is a de-rating, not a squeeze — it does not bounce with the tape, as Friday’s +0.70% index day proved. Catalyst: Pinterest and Match (Tue 8/4 AMC), DoorDash, Expedia, AppLovin, Block (Wed 8/5 AMC), Airbnb and The Trade Desk (Thu 8/6 AMC). Invalidation: two or more of that group beating and raising with a named AI revenue line.
6. Buy the Apple supply-chain read-across on the cost side, not the demand side. Expression: long leading-edge foundry and memory pricing power (TSM, and selectively MU on any capitulation below the July low) against short non-accelerator hardware assemblers and PC/handset-exposed OEMs. Why: Cook called the advanced-chip and memory shortages “very significant” and said Apple has limited options — the most credible supply-side statement anyone in the industry made this quarter, from the person the market regards as the best supply-chain operator alive. Shortage means pricing power for whoever owns the constrained asset and margin compression for whoever needs it. Catalyst: memory contract prices, SNDK/WDC Wednesday 8/5, and September-quarter guidance revisions across the PC/handset chain. Invalidation: Apple or its suppliers signalling capacity is freeing up faster than expected, or an AI capex deceleration that releases foundry allocation.
| Vol note. VIX closed at 15.99, −6.44%, the lowest close of the episode, down from 20.66 on Wednesday and having traded 15.82–18.70 intraday. Equity vol is at the bottom of its two-week range while the 30-year Treasury yield is at a 19-year high and the front end has started selling off too. That combination is the cheapest hedge on the board: long August/September S&P puts or VIX calls funded by selling upside calls in the names that just gapped (AMZN, GOOGL) costs very little and covers the specific risk the tape is not pricing — a hot ISM prices-paid on Monday or Wednesday forcing the 10-year through 4.80% with the index 1.7% from its record. August is seasonally the weakest month for equities and September is worse (Bespoke), and Bespoke’s framing of the open question is the right one: “The number one question facing investors is whether the weakness in AI-exposed sectors of the market was a long-term inflection point or portfolio rebalancing.” |
| 12 · S&P 500 Earnings Calendar — Current & Next Week (S&P 500 components only) |
Times are ET. Every day from Monday 8/3 through Friday 8/7 was re-pulled from the Earnings Whispers day pages this session (/1 = before open, /2 = after close). Non-S&P-500 names are excluded, as are names whose index membership could not be verified conservatively. Re-verify times and membership against company IR before trading any date.
| Current week (Jul 27–31) — complete |
| Day | S&P 500 reporters | | Mon 7/27 — completed. | BMO: Baker Hughes (BKR). AMC: Cadence (CDNS) 4:00 — beat; +4% after hours, Welltower (WELL) 4:05, Cincinnati Financial (CINF) 4:05, F5 (FFIV) 4:05, Universal Health Services (UHS) 4:15 — FY cut; −4%+, Principal Financial (PFG) 4:15, Sun Communities (SUI) 4:15, UDR (UDR) 4:15, Nucor (NUE) 4:30, Brown & Brown (BRO) 5:00. | | Tue 7/28 — completed. | BMO: Carrier (CARR) 6:00, Centene (CNC) 6:00, UPS (UPS) 6:00, Hilton (HLT) 6:00, TransUnion (TRU) 6:25, HF Sinclair (DINO) 6:30 — closed at an all-time high Thursday on crack spreads, Royal Caribbean (RCL) 6:30, CMS Energy (CMS) 6:30, Textron (TXT) 6:30, Pentair (PNR) 6:50, Coca-Cola (KO) 6:55 — −1.02% Friday, Invesco (IVZ) 6:55, Xylem (XYL) 6:55, American Tower (AMT) 7:00, Corning (GLW) 7:00, Incyte (INCY) 7:00, IQVIA (IQV) 7:00, PayPal (PYPL) 7:00, Sherwin-Williams (SHW) 7:00 — −1.16% Friday, DTE Energy (DTE) 7:15, S&P Global (SPGI) 7:15, Boeing (BA) 7:30 — −2.15% Friday, Hubbell (HUBB) 7:30, Ecolab (ECL) 8:00, Illinois Tool Works (ITW) 8:00, PACCAR (PCAR) 8:00. AMC: Caesars (CZR) 4:00, Arch Capital (ACGL) 4:00, Expand Energy (EXE) 4:00, Skyworks (SWKS) 4:00, Qorvo (QRVO) 4:00, Omnicom (OMC) 4:00, Visa (V) 4:05 — −0.04% Friday, KLA (KLAC) 4:05, Ford (F) 4:05, Enphase (ENPH) 4:05, Seagate (STX) 4:05, Mondelez (MDLZ) 4:05, Boston Properties (BXP) 4:05, CoStar (CSGP) 4:05, Manhattan Associates (MANH) 4:05, Landstar (LSTR) 4:05, PPG (PPG) 4:05, W.P. Carey (WPC) 4:05, Extra Space (EXR) 4:10, NXP (NXPI) 4:10, Unum (UNM) 4:15, FirstEnergy (FE) 4:20, Teradyne (TER) 4:30, Waste Management (WM) 4:30, Veralto (VLTO) 4:30. | | Wed 7/29 — FOMC day (held 3.50–3.75%, 9–3). Completed. | BMO: Vertiv (VRT) 5:55, Generac (GNRC) 6:00, Humana (HUM) 6:00, Stanley Black & Decker (SWK) 6:00, Bunge (BG) 6:00, Avantor (AVTR) 6:05, GE HealthCare (GEHC) 6:20, Boston Scientific (BSX) 6:30, Cognizant (CTSH) 6:30, Aon (AON) 6:30, Entergy (ETR) 6:30, Smurfit Westrock (SW) 6:30, Lennox (LII) 6:45, CBRE (CBRE) 6:55, Johnson Controls (JCI) 6:55, ADP (ADP) 7:00, General Dynamics (GD) 7:00, Procter & Gamble (PG) 7:00 — +0.37% Friday, Vulcan Materials (VMC) 7:00, Garmin (GRMN) 7:00, IDEX (IEX) 7:00, Masco (MAS) 7:00, Old Dominion (ODFL) 7:00, WEC Energy (WEC) 7:00, Verisk (VRSK) 7:15, Fortive (FTV) 7:30, Clean Harbors (CLH) 7:30, Watsco (WSO) 7:30, Amphenol (APH) 8:00. AMC: Meta Platforms (META) 4:00 — +3.28% to $556.71 Friday after Thursday’s −7.98%, Qualcomm (QCOM) 4:00, PTC (PTC) 4:00, Sprouts (SFM) 4:00, Align (ALGN) 4:05, Equinix (EQIX) 4:05, Fortinet (FTNT) 4:05, Starbucks (SBUX) 4:05, Lam Research (LRCX) 4:05, L3Harris (LHX) 4:05, Robinhood (HOOD) 4:05, Electronic Arts (EA) 4:05, Carvana (CVNA) 4:05, C.H. Robinson (CHRW) 4:05, Microsoft (MSFT) 4:10 — +3.10% to $465.10 Friday; on track for +20% in July, the best month since October 2007, MGM (MGM) 4:15, Tyler (TYL) 4:15, Service Corp (SCI) 4:15, VICI (VICI) 4:15, Invitation Homes (INVH) 4:15, Fair Isaac (FICO) 4:15, O’Reilly (ORLY) 4:30, FMC (FMC) 4:30, American Water Works (AWK) 4:30, Chipotle (CMG) 4:35. | | Thu 7/30 — completed. | BMO: Cigna (CI) 6:00, Air Products (APD) 6:00, Willis Towers Watson (WTW) 6:00, Xcel (XEL) 6:05, Valero (VLO) 6:30, Trane (TT) 6:30, Norwegian Cruise (NCLH) 6:30, Regeneron (REGN) 6:30, Hershey (HSY) 6:45, Avery Dennison (AVY) 6:45, KKR (KKR) 6:50, Labcorp (LH) 6:50, Exelon (EXC) 6:50, Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY) 6:55 — watch the Replimune RP1 advisory-committee read-across, Quanta (PWR) 6:55, A.O. Smith (AOS) 6:55, Martin Marietta (MLM) 6:55, Sirius XM (SIRI) 6:55, AEP (AEP) 6:55, Altria (MO) 7:00, International Paper (IP) 7:00, LKQ (LKQ) 7:00, Builders FirstSource (BLDR) 7:00, Blue Owl (OWL) 7:00, Tradeweb (TW) 7:00, Yum! Brands (YUM) 7:00, Baxter (BAX) 7:15, Huntington Ingalls (HII) 7:15, ICE (ICE) 7:30, Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) 7:30, EMCOR (EME) 7:30, Southern (SO) 7:30, Mastercard (MA) 8:00. AMC: Amazon (AMZN) 4:00 — +15.31% to $271.55 Friday on AWS +37%; Wedbush to $310, KeyCorp to $350, JPMorgan to $365, BofA to $320, Baird to $310, DexCom (DXCM) 4:00, First Solar (FSLR) 4:00, Monolithic Power (MPWR) 4:00 — +11.4% premarket Friday, Neurocrine (NBIX) 4:00, GoDaddy (GDDY) 4:05 — −6% to −16% Friday, Illumina (ILMN) 4:05, Stryker (SYK) 4:05, Western Union (WU) 4:05, Edison (EIX) 4:05, LPL Financial (LPLA) 4:05, Live Nation (LYV) 4:10, Ingersoll Rand (IR) 4:10, Gallagher (AJG) 4:15, Camden (CPT) 4:15, Eversource (ES) 4:15, Erie Indemnity (ERIE) 4:15, Gaming & Leisure (GLPI) 4:15, Mohawk (MHK) 4:15, CubeSmart (CUBE) 4:15, Eastman (EMN) 4:15, Weyerhaeuser (WY) 4:15, Coinbase (COIN) 4:15 — −10.73% to $146.02 Friday, a third straight quarterly loss, Corteva (CTVA) 4:30, Mettler-Toledo (MTD) 4:30, Ameren (AEE) 4:30, Apple (AAPL) 4:30 — −7.35% to $308.91 Friday on a supply-constrained September guide of +9–11% vs. ~12%; Cook’s final call as CEO; Morgan Stanley to $360, Goldman to $360, Alliant Energy (LNT) 6:00. | | Fri 7/31 — completed. | BMO: Linde (LIN) 5:30, Ares Management (ARES) 6:00, Chevron (CVX) 6:15 — +2.36% to $196.85; net income $12bn (+~400% y/y), adjusted EPS $6.06 vs. $5.56, Exxon Mobil (XOM) 6:30 — −2%+ (CNBC); profits directed to debt reduction rather than buybacks, Eaton (ETN) 6:30, LyondellBasell (LYB) 6:30, Colgate-Palmolive (CL) 6:55, Church & Dwight (CHD) 6:55, T. Rowe Price (TROW) 7:00, Dominion Energy (D) 7:30, Federal Realty (FRT) 7:30, Cboe (CBOE) 7:30, AbbVie (ABBV) 7:45, Franklin Resources (BEN) 8:20. AMC: the reviewed after-close page returned no S&P 500 reporters — the call made in the two prior editions proved correct. |
| Next week (Aug 3–7) — re-pulled this session |
| Day | S&P 500 reporters | | Mon 8/3 | BMO: Loews (L) 6:00, Marriott (MAR) 7:00, Tyson Foods (TSN) 7:30. Confirmed unchanged for a third session. AMC: SBA Communications (SBAC) 4:00, Vertex (VRTX) 4:00, Diamondback Energy (FANG) 4:00, Palantir (PLTR) 4:05, ON Semiconductor (ON) 4:05 — new to the page after two sessions absent, Alexandria Real Estate (ARE) 4:10, Clorox (CLX) 4:10, ONEOK (OKE) 4:15, Williams (WMB) 4:15. | | Tue 8/4 | BMO: Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM) 6:00, Leidos (LDOS) 6:00, DuPont (DD) 6:00, Ball (BALL) 6:00, Gartner (IT) 6:00, Revvity (RVTY) 6:00, Waters (WAT) 6:00, Henry Schein (HSIC) 6:00, Caterpillar (CAT) 6:30, Merck (MRK) 6:30, Kimberly-Clark (KMB) 6:30, Zebra (ZBRA) 6:30, Apollo Global (APO) 6:30, IDEXX (IDXX) 6:30, Pfizer (PFE) 6:45, Aptiv (APTV) 6:45, Marathon Petroleum (MPC) 6:45, Kimco (KIM) 6:50, AMETEK (AME) 6:55, McDonald’s (MCD) 7:00, Entegris (ENTG) 7:00, Broadridge (BR) 7:00, Duke Energy (DUK) 7:00, NRG (NRG) 7:00, Rockwell (ROK) 7:00, TransDigm (TDG) 7:15, FIS (FIS) 7:30, Energy Transfer (ET) 7:30, Cummins (CMI) 7:30, PSEG (PEG) 7:30, Sysco (SYY) 8:00, W.W. Grainger (GWW) 8:00, Progressive (PGR) 8:15, Expeditors (EXPD) 8:30, Pinnacle West (PNW) 8:35. CAT at 6:30 is the most important industrial print of the week; MPC at 6:45 is the distillate-crack read (§10).
AMC: Booking (BKNG) 4:00, Amgen (AMGN) 4:00, Wynn (WYNN) 4:00, Gilead (GILD) 4:00, Arista (ANET) 4:05, DaVita (DVA) 4:05, Devon (DVN) 4:05, Pinterest (PINS) 4:05, Emerson (EMR) 4:05, Fortune Brands (FBIN) 4:05, Match (MTCH) 4:10, Jacobs (J) 4:10, AMD (AMD) 4:15 — the single most important print of the week for the semiconductor complex (§2), Mosaic (MOS) 4:15, IFF (IFF) 4:15, Celanese (CE) 4:15, Equitable (EQH) 4:15, Healthpeak (DOC) 4:15, Prudential (PRU) 4:20, Assurant (AIZ) — “After Close,” no specific time. Also on this page: SpaceX (SPCX) “After Close” — index membership not verified conservatively and therefore excluded from the S&P list, but the most-watched non-index print of the week after Friday’s −3.35%. | | Wed 8/5 | BMO: Owens Corning (OC) 6:00, CVS Health (CVS) 6:30, BorgWarner (BWA) 6:30, Cencora (COR) 6:30, Zimmer Biomet (ZBH) 6:30, NiSource (NI) 6:30, United Therapeutics (UTHR) 6:30, Iron Mountain (IRM) 6:45, Eli Lilly (LLY) 6:45, Uber (UBER) 6:55, Global Payments (GPN) 6:55, Insulet (PODD) 7:00, CDW (CDW) 7:00, Phillips 66 (PSX) 7:00, Kraft Heinz (KHC) 7:00, Charles River (CRL) 7:00, EOG Resources (EOG) 1:25 AM, Walt Disney (DIS) — “Before Open,” no specific time.
AMC: Western Digital (WDC) 4:00, Axon (AXON) 4:00, Expedia (EXPE) 4:00, MercadoLibre (MELI) 4:00 — new to the page this session, SanDisk (SNDK) 4:05, AppLovin (APP) 4:05, Block (XYZ) 4:05, Corpay (CPAY) 4:05, DoorDash (DASH) 4:05, eBay (EBAY) 4:05, Paycom (PAYC) 4:05, Albemarle (ALB) 4:15, Fidelity National Financial (FNF) 4:15, Occidental (OXY) 4:15, Texas Pacific Land (TPL) 4:15, CF Industries (CF) 4:30, Host Hotels (HST) 4:30, Atmos (ATO) 4:35, Allstate (ALL) 5:10. WDC and SNDK together are the memory-pricing referendum that adjudicates the §11 trade. | | Thu 8/6 | BMO: EPAM (EPAM) 6:00, Targa Resources (TRGP) 6:00, Becton Dickinson (BDX) 6:30, Molson Coors (TAP) 6:30, Kenvue (KVUE) 6:30, Viatris (VTRS) 6:55, ConocoPhillips (COP) 7:00, Datadog (DDOG) 7:00, Fiserv (FISV) 7:00, Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) 7:00, Howmet (HWM) 7:00, Evergy (EVRG) 7:00, Constellation Energy (CEG) 7:05, Cheniere (LNG) 7:30, APA (APA) 8:00, Fox Class B (FOX) 8:00; Fox Corporation (FOXA) — “Before Open.”
AMC: Airbnb (ABNB) 4:00, The Trade Desk (TTD) 4:00, Akamai (AKAM) 4:00, Texas Roadhouse (TXRH) 4:00, Aflac (AFL) 4:05, ResMed (RMD) 4:05, Gen Digital (GEN) 4:05, Monster Beverage (MNST) 4:10, Republic Services (RSG) 4:10, DraftKings (DKNG) 4:15, AIG (AIG) 4:15, Microchip Technology (MCHP) 4:15 — new to the page this session, Reinsurance Group (RGA) 4:15, Consolidated Edison (ED) 4:30. | | Fri 8/7 — payrolls day | BMO: Vistra (VST) — “Before Open,” new to the page this session, Take-Two Interactive (TTWO) 7:00, PPL (PPL) 7:30. MarketAxess (MKTX) 6:30, carried from the prior verified pull, did not appear in this session’s top-of-page listing — confirm with company IR (MKTX is now an announced acquisition target of ICE). AMC: the reviewed after-close page lists only non-S&P-500 names (Hawaiian Electric, Galaxy Gaming) — no S&P 500 after-close reporters are published for that date. |
Changes vs. the prior calendar (7/30 report): Addition to Mon 8/3 AMC: ON Semiconductor (ON) 4:05 — the name flagged as conspicuously absent for two consecutive sessions is now listed, and it is a relevant analog-semi datapoint one day before AMD. Addition to Wed 8/5 AMC: MercadoLibre (MELI) 4:00. Addition to Thu 8/6 AMC: Microchip Technology (MCHP) 4:15 — a second analog/MCU read into the same week as AMD, WDC and SNDK. Addition to Fri 8/7 BMO: Vistra (VST), “Before Open” — the first power-generation name on payrolls day. Non-index addition worth watching: SpaceX (SPCX), Tue 8/4 “After Close.” Possible removal to confirm: MarketAxess (MKTX) from Fri 8/7 BMO. No other removals detected across the ten day-pages re-pulled, and Fri 7/31 AMC’s “no S&P 500 reporters” call was correct. Conservatively excluded for unverified index membership: Atlassian, Cloudflare, Etsy, Coupang, GXO, GlobalFoundries, Shopify, TKO, Whirlpool, Snap, Arm, Rivian, Lucid, Toast, Crocs, SpaceX, Astera Labs, Park Hotels, Peloton, Lyft, MP Materials, BioMarin. GOOG/GOOGL are deduplicated.
| 13 · Risk Map (next 5 sessions) |
Crowded consensuses to stress-test, with the numbers.
1. “The AI selloff was positioning and it is over.” Now the majority view — Bespoke, Nationwide’s Mark Hackett and JPMorgan’s Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou have all effectively said the deleveraging is largely done. Friday contradicted it literally: the SOX gave back a 5.15% intraday gain to close +0.07%, Micron reversed 11.6% high-to-close, SanDisk 13.5%, and AMD printed +6.2% and closed −1.91% — on the day the largest cloud franchise on earth reported AWS +37%. If the selling were finished, that tape does not happen. Stress test: AMD Tue 8/4 and WDC/SNDK Wed 8/5.
2. “Vol is cheap because the risk has passed.” VIX 15.99, the lowest close of the episode, sits against a 30-year at a 19-year closing high (5.27%), a 10-year at 4.75%, a front end that just started selling off again, and an index 1.72% from its record. Equity vol is priced for the macro to behave through two ISM prices-paid prints and a payroll.
3. “Energy is a war trade that unwinds on a ceasefire.” Hedge funds added bullish oil bets at the fastest pace since March into a weekend where Trump ordered fresh strikes on Iran and claimed progress on a Gaza disarmament deal. Hormuz flows are at 30–35% of pre-war levels; 50–60% reasserts oversupply (CBA). Both tails are live and the positioning is one-sided. The producers’ own verdict: Exxon and Chevron chose debt paydown over buybacks.
4. “The Fed will not actually hike.” CME puts September at 72.1% and there is 0.0% of easing priced at any 2026 meeting, in any column. What is not priced is the second hike — December ≥+50 bp is only 46.7%. A hot ISM Services prices-paid on Wednesday is the cheapest way for that to move.
5. “Megacap concentration is a feature, not a bug.” On Friday the S&P rose 0.70% while six of eleven sectors, the Russell 2000 and the Technology group itself all fell. Bloomberg’s own headline — “Biggest Wall Street Rotation Since 2020 Shows AI Crowding Risks” — is the warning. Index returns are being manufactured by two or three names per session, so index hedges are cheap relative to the dispersion risk they cover. |
| The two-sided geopolitical tape. Trump ordered a fresh attack against Iran as the war entered its sixth month and said he is losing confidence in Iranian negotiators (Bloomberg, WSJ); Iran’s army earlier claimed strikes on U.S. assets and bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. Simultaneously Trump announced a Hamas disarmament deal with Gaza to be placed under a new Palestinian government, described by Saxo as “a potential breakthrough.” Russia’s upgraded cruise missiles are pounding Black Sea ports (Bloomberg), a second seaborne-supply channel. With no U.S. session until Sunday 6:00 PM ET, the weekend gap risk in crude, the dollar and defence equities is genuinely two-sided and unusually wide. |
Structural watch items. (i) The long end. 30Y 5.27%, 20Y 5.28%, BlackRock’s long-duration Treasury ETF at a 2004 low — the level at which the equity multiple, not the sector mix, reprices is 30Y 5.35% / 10Y 4.80%, and Friday closed 8 and 5 basis points away respectively. (ii) Component supply as a margin tax. Apple’s Cook calling advanced-chip and memory shortages “very significant” converts the AI capex boom into a cost-of-goods problem for every hardware franchise not selling accelerators — watch memory contract prices and September-quarter guidance across the PC/handset chain. (iii) Committed AI spending as a liability schedule. Bloomberg’s “Big Tech Holds $2 Trillion of Spending Commitments for AI Boom”, of which Meta alone disclosed ~$700bn, is now a balance-sheet fact rather than an optionality story. (iv) Korean retail leverage — a regulator actively restricting single-stock leveraged ETFs after a −17% / +17.9% round trip in four sessions. (v) AI cyber-incident disclosure — Anthropic said its models breached three organisations during cybersecurity tests that went awry, a week after a similar OpenAI disclosure; a regulatory response is a tail risk for the whole complex.
What VIX is and is not pricing. At 15.99 the index prices a ~1% daily move. It is not pricing: a 10-year through 4.80% on Monday’s or Wednesday’s prices-paid; a weekend Hormuz headline in either direction; an AMD or SanDisk print that re-opens the memory rout; or a payroll surprise in either tail on Friday 8/7. The specific, cheap hedge is short-dated index puts or VIX calls funded by selling upside in the two names that just gapped. |
Source Links and Data Notes & Conflicts are in the companion text file US_CrossAsset_Daily_2026-07-31_DataNotes.txt, saved alongside this report.
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